5 fascinating videos about the world's most wanted drug lord who just escaped from prison (again)
“El Chapo” when translated from Spanish into English, literally means “Shorty”. It's mostly an ironic nickname, because it's wholly inappropriate for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán: Mexico’s most infamous drug trafficker. The US considers him the most powerful drug lord in the world, and he regularly features on the Forbes list of the world's most powerful people. He is also one of the richest, and his cocaine trafficking is now said to have rivaled the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar.
And he has just escaped Mexico's most high-security prison for the second time. Yes, you read that right. Altiplano, as the prison is known, is a no-fly zone to prevent an escape by helicopter. Even the airwaves are jammed to restrict prisoners to communicate from the outside world. Yet despite, this extreme security and surveillance, El Chapo made his second escape from the prison, humiliating a government that said it could never happen.
He was last seen at 8:52 pm on Altiplano’s surveillance cameras when he stepped into the shower area. According to prison authorities, he paved his way out through a 1.5 km tunnel which had a small opening in the shower area of the cell. Mexico’s national security commissioner, Monte Alejandro Rubido told reporters that the tunnel also had a motorcycle waiting for him, which El Chapo used while escaping. El Chapo is not one to dig his own tunnels, and according to Rubido, this passage was an industrial feat. It featured lighting and ventilation, and extended 1.5 kilometers to a house outside the prison walls. By the time authorities searched the house, Guzmán had vanished, the Guardian reports. The same thing happened in 2001, when having been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1993, El Chapo managed to use an officer's uniform to escape.
Over the course of these five videos, you can trace how El Chapo first emerged on the scene, how big his influence is in the community, and just what it took to arrest him. And then, of course there are the legendary escapes.